Russia Finally Decides Beer Isn't Soda, Counts as Alcohol

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a law yesterday that, for the first time in the country's history, defines beer as alcohol.

Yes, despite all evidence to the contrary (like the fact that there is alcohol in beer), the hard-drinking nation's laws have always treated beer like a foodstuff, allowing it to be sold from street kiosks at just about any time day or night, and drunken openly in public.

Under the new law, which goes into effect January 1, 2013, beer falls under the same time and vendor restrictions as liquor and can't be sold between 11pm and 8am.

According to Kirill Danishevsky, a Russian alcohol control activist with whom the Christian Science Monitor spoke, this is a step forward for a country with a major drinking issue, even if "beer is not the main source of Russia's problems."

According to a report released by the World Health Organization earlier this year, Russians guzzle 7 gallons of pure alcohol per capita per year. So that's about 90 bottles of vodka per person per year, or 1,350 pints of beer. (For comparison, Americans drink 470 pints of beer; the British down about 1,100.)

But even Danishevsky admits that booze has its place in Russian culture, calling drinking, especially for the poor, "one of the few pleasures; it substitutes for other values in life."